POP-CULTURE COLUMN: Oh, Canada!
By Dan Brown I love Canada. A lot. There are, of course, things I would change about our homeland if I was in charge. I’m guessing you feel the same way. For instance, I wish we flew the maple leaf all year around, not just on our national birthday which I like to call by its old name, Dominion Day – see, I told you there are things that bug me! I wish Canadians weren’t so hesitant to celebrate our shared national culture. I wish we did more to promote our values around the world. Canadian values are good values, and we shouldn’t be ashamed about trumpeting what we believe in to the rest of humankind. I’ve even heard some people are ashamed to make patriotic gestures like flying the flag, even on July 1. I started noticing this a few years ago. People would say to me, “________has co-opted the flag,” meaning a group or movement or organization or political party or individual they didn’t agree with. So these people won’t display the maple leaf because they see it being flown on pickup trucks. And other people won’t display it because they see flags in parades with the red parts replaced with a rainbow. I’m here to remind you it belongs to all Canadians. That means the folks on the right, folks on the left, and those of us who don’t identify with either of those positions. If you think the red-and-white has been taken from you, and you want a way to fight back, the way to do that most effectively is to hoist the flag yourself. Fly one on the front door of your house. Put it on your car. Get a maple-leaf T-shirt. Strap a miniature version on your dog. Trust me. You can’t offend me because I will never tire of seeing it. This column is scheduled to be posted the day after Canada Day, but I would love if we could make a national habit of displaying the flag proudly all year long. Don’t take your Canadian flag down when this column goes up. Oh, and let me know how you spent your Canada Day in the comments. Also, let us know what aspect of Canada you love the most. Is it the landscape? The Rockies? Cottage country? The people? Your neighbours? Our amazing writers and other artists? Canada’s talented athletes? Maybe it’s hockey, or poutine? Is it Wolverine? RUSH? Something else? As I write this sentence, the hottest musical act on the planet right now, Quebec’s Angine de Poitrine, is playing on YouTube. The duo are from Saguenay, Quebec (or possibly another planet), but to me they represent the kind of culture and daring attitude that could have only happened in this country. They’re kind of like the Cirque du Soleil of rock music. Purely Canadian. They are just the latest example of our nation’s creativity and excellence. We are a young dominion, bursting with natural resources, that is home to a resilient, forward-thinking people. If we play our cards right, the future will belong to us. All the best to you, my fellow Canadians! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
Supergirl is New To Me
GRAPHIC-NOVEL COLUMN: Supergirl is new to me By Dan Brown I don’t know much about Supergirl. If you’re a regular reader of her adventures, then you likely know more about the venerable character than I do. How unschooled am I on Supergirl? I haven’t yet seen the new movie starring the Maiden of Might, which opened last weekend. And although I’ve had decades, I haven’t ever watched the 1984 feature film that stars Helen Slater in the title role, either. I do remember Supergirl being killed off in 1985 in the legendary Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries that rebooted the DC Universe. And I did greatly enjoy Canadian writer Mariko Tamaki’s attempt to relaunch Superman’s cousin in 2018 in Supergirl: Being Super. More on that in a moment. So in an attempt to learn more about the Woman of Tomorrow, I picked up the DC glossy magazine that features four “acclaimed” Supergirl issues, each one representing a new stab at bringing the hero back to prominence. One story has the flavour of a vintage sci-fi novel a la the John Carter of Mars books. Another reads like a Twilight Zone episode. In the third tale, she was reintroduced as a secret-agent type operative. And in the concluding instalment, she’s basically a plot device in the relationship between Superman and his frenemy Batman. The multiple efforts to freshen up Supergirl point to an unavoidable conclusion: Comic fans may not find her all that compelling. It’s not like she was the first “Super” spinoff. That distinction goes to Superboy, who appeared in 1945, seven years after Action Comics No. 1 landed. Kara Zor-El wouldn’t depart Krypton’s Argo City until 1959, in the same era when DC introduced a dog, cat, horse and other super-powered survivors of Krypton. Each time, the publisher diminished what made Superman’s origin so poignant. His claim to fame – being the last son of a doomed planet, sent to Earth where its yellow sun would make him invincible – wasn’t so unique anymore. He wasn’t so special. So if you want a collection that tries to square the 1950s/1960s DC weirdness with the current continuity, as well as appeals to modern readers who would rather their comics be grim than silly, check out this magazine. I do love reading regular comics on a larger page. Now, if you want what I consider a superior Supergirl anthology, pick up the afore-mentioned Supergirl: Being Super. In my (admittedly limited) experience, it is the best Supergirl story out there. It effectively evokes the mood of what it would be like living as an alien teenager attending high school in a small American town. In one scene, Kara pops a zit on her chin. A minor problem we’ve all experienced, right? Just temporary grossness. Yet since she’s from Krypton, the zit explodes all over the bathroom, coating walls, floor and ceiling in thick green extraterrestrial slime. As if coming of age wasn’t bad enough. Even better, Being Super is pencilled precisely by Joelle Jones. If anyone reading this column has seen the new motion picture, I’d be grateful to hear your take. Is it good enough that I should see it while the movie is still in theatres? I understand the flick takes many of its cues from the John Carter-tinged Supergirl tale I mentioned above, and its structure mirrors not any comic property, but the classic movie western, True Grit. Is that the right combination of elements to turn Supergirl into a vibrant movie property? And maybe entice readers to seek out her comics? Let me know your answer in the comments! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
POP-CULTURE COLUMN: The Joys of Summer Reading
By Dan Brown The summer of 2026 has officially begun. And I can’t wait for the best part. No, not drinking a frosty beer on a sunny patio. Not driving up to Grand Bend for long weekends. Not even the freedom of wearing shorts and Hawaiian shirts. I mean the truly greatest part, better than any of those pleasures. Summer reading. I’m not talking about beach reading, but about the feeling of satisfaction you get from crossing off titles on your summer reading list. If you’ve never heard of such a list before, let me catch you up. I got the idea from my Grade 13 English teacher, Evan Pike, who taught at the old Strathroy District Collegiate Institute. Our paths crossed in the mid-1980s when I was a snotty teen. Pike would often refer to reading lists. He would mention a book in one of our class discussions and ask me (or a classmate) if I had ever read that particular volume. “No,” would come the answer. “Add that to your summer reading list,” he would respond, not in a joking way. For him, I’m guessing, this wasn’t a theoretical thing. My bet is that when he was in school, either as a kid or later in life, my mentor was actually assigned books to read over the warmer months by his teachers. You gotta remember, he was old-school. Pike came of age when they were still teaching Latin in high school. I think the first time I had a summer reading list, maybe in the 1990s, I wasn’t even really aware of it. I just started reading novels by Ernest Hemingway then and by August I had gone through every tattered title I could find in places like City Lights Bookshop or the Coldstream Library. It may have been when the next summer arrived that I said to myself, “Well, what am I going to read now?” I had picked up the idea taking English in my last year of high school and it was growing into a conscious habit. Fast-forward to today, and at this point I’m older than Pike was when he taught us. And each time my favourite season rolls around, I make a scratchy list on a yellow Post-It with a black Sharpie of the titles that will comprise my latest reading project. One summer it was Terry Brooks, the fantasy author. Another it was all the books I’d been read at storytime at Valleyview Elementary School, so Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Charlotte’s Web and Where the Red Fern Grows and so on (and yes, as an adult I cried at the tear-jerker endings that moved me so much when I was a boy). One year it was books by the sci-fi author John Morressy. He’s so obscure, he barely has a Wikipedia page. I may be his only fan. But that didn’t stop me from devouring his written work. And so the summers went. Now it’s become a personal tradition. Pike is long gone, but summer reading still makes sense to me – if you have some extra time, the pressure of work is off, why not use the hiatus to enrich your brain? I don’t even get summers off, like my old teacher did, so I make the time. I like to think he would be pleased that his reading advice to me has outlived him. You may be wondering what I’m reading right now. Even before June 21, I had been going through a number of biographies and memoir. Now it’s time to kick the summer reading into high gear. I’m currently working my way through Lives of the Stoics, a collection of mini-bios of philosophers, and I’ve got a stack of books on the table beside my bed – like a collection of Vincent Van Gogh’s letters to his brother, as well as Andre Agassi’s much-praised life story. I finished cartoonist Gabrielle Drolet’s Look Ma, No Hands in the spring to get an early start. So what about you? What will you be reading in the weeks before fall arrives? If you’re new to the concept, take some time to think about the titles you’ve been meaning to catch up on. Perhaps there are important books from your past you want to re-read. It’s all good. When you’re done pondering, draw up a list, then get started. Would love to hear all about what you’re reading in the comments! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
Some Light War Reading
GRAPHIC-NOVEL COLUMN: Some light war reading By Dan Brown One of the books I’ve been reading during the U.S.-Iran war is Generation Zero, a 1991 out-of-print collaboration between Pepe Moreno and Archie Goodwin. A good chunk of this graphic novel takes place in the same region where U.S. and Iranian forces are vying for strategic advantage after U.S. President Donald Trump chose to attack the longtime thorn in the side of the United States. It’s not clear as of this writing if the war is on or off, but that doesn’t stop the stylish graphic novel from seeming like the right book for the moment. Generation Zero first appeared in serialized form in Epic Illustrated, Marvel’s answer to Heavy Metal, starting in 1983. The monthly featured creator-owned properties aimed at mature readers. In Goodwin’s words, Generation Zero is a “post-doomsday fantasy adventure.” I found it worth my while to track down online. One of the eight chapters, titled Desert Hunt, takes place in roughly the same area as the Red Sea – which, after a limited nuclear war, has become a desert hell in this alternate future. There’s an eye-popping panel that spreads across two pages of a beached oil tanker on its side – it was travelling on the Red Sea’s waters before the apocalypse. And it turns out, even in the decades to come, oil is still crucial for transportation. The book stars a trio of army deserters who venture from a refuge in Iceland in an advanced aircraft searching for a new home for their burgeoning civilization, the ultimate goal being to re-start human life on a large scale. Along the way, they encounter mutated giant snakes, topless belly dancers, ancient ruins, redheads, and an evil army with war supplies to spare. All of it is drawn (and coloured) gorgeously by the Spaniard Moreno. His art reminds me of a combination of France’s Moebius and Italy’s Franco Francavilla. It’s that strong. The action sequences pop off the page. Although it’s a post-nuclear war story, I think Moreno had another fantasy series on his mind when he created Generation Zero. The concluding chapter relates a battle on a catwalk above a barely-suppressed volcano in which it turns out – in a stunning surprise revelation – the two combatants are members of the same family. Sounds like Star Wars to me. If you’re wondering what Goodwin did, the Marvel stalwart supplied the dialogue and captions. It’s an intoxicating, pulpy mix that I liked when I read it for the first time in Epic in the 1980s, and I love as an adult in standalone form. The difference between Generation Zero and other post-nuclear comics, like Threads from Raymond Briggs, is that it depicts the aftermath of a limited nuclear conflict. The far-fetched notion that the superpowers wouldn’t try to completely annihilate each other was a novel one in the Cold War, as now. Even given that faint glimmer of hope, this graphic novel remains a nightmare vision of a possible tomorrow for humankind that isn’t entirely off the table. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
POP-CULTURE COLUMN: Give Doctor Who A Rest
By Dan Brown I haven’t watched Doctor Who on the regular in a long time. And I don’t believe there should be any new episodes of the venerable BBC series for a long time, either. That’s to help guarantee the viability of the program far into the future. Why am I saying this? You may have heard Doctor Who is at a crossroads. Showrunner Russell T. Davies has exited the series, and the rights to produce the show have been put out to tender. My feeling is, for the Doctor to survive, the character needs to go away for several years. Maybe even decades. It last aired on Disney+ in May, 2025. Although it was a staple of my childhood pop-culture diet, I haven’t been a regular viewer for ages. I think the BBC needs to send a message to fans: You’ve been taking the long-running show and its title character for granted. In a world with seemingly unlimited sci-fi content, Doctor Who has been getting, with its built-in generational audience, the short end of the proverbial stick. It needs to go fallow. Doctor Who aired for the first time in 1963, and made a generation of British children jump behind their living-room couches with its weird mix of rubber monsters, cliffhanger endings, and bargain-basement special effects. It eventually came to North America, where kids like me – watching on public broadcaster TVOntario – were enchanted, many of us becoming fans for decades. And yes, it has gone on hiatus before – notably from 1989 to 2005. Then it got a new lease on life with Davies at the helm. But lately, it feels more like background noise than compelling appointment viewing, whatever that might mean in the age of streaming services. I admit, I’m one of those boring, middle-age fogies whose first Doctor was played by Tom Baker. And in my view, he’s never been surpassed. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you who the last couple Doctors were, and I’m a Disney+ subscriber! (That’s the conceit of the show, that the Doctor regenerates every so often into a new body.) So let’s put it on the shelf for, say, a decade, and give fans a chance to miss the ever-quipping Time Lord. The character has stood the test of time before, I’m not worried Doctor Who will be forgotten. Besides, in our streaming reality, many programs take years between seasons to come back into our living rooms anyway. As smarter people than me -- like science-fiction writer Mark Shainblum -- have pointed out, the premise of the show is “inherently self-refreshing,” meaning each new actor who takes on the role represents an opportunity for the production team to set off in a new direction anywhere in this or any other universe. I think this was true in the show’s early days, but the Doctor isn’t in an environment anymore where his competition is other network productions. Now his competition is TikTok and YouTube. Besides, there are plenty of precedents for franchises that went on hiatus (imposed or voluntary) and came back stronger, built for the long run: Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica. Even Marvel Studios is producing fewer superhero movies and shows now. Speaking of Marvel, the worst thing the BBC could do is go on making Doctor Who content just for the sake of making Doctor Who content. I am open to one slight variation on the hiatus though: I hear an animated Doctor Who series may be in the works. If true, I could get behind that – so long as Tom Baker returns as the voice of the character! He’s still kickin, so The Fourth Doctor: The Animated Series sounds good to me! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
GRAPHIC-NOVEL COLUMN: GNG does a twofer
By Dan Brown SPOILER WARNING: This column contains plot details from two graphic novels. If you value surprise, stop reading now! You’ve been warned. The L.A. Mood Graphic-Novel Group met Saturday, June13. Because our May meeting had been cancelled, we covered the assigned books for both May and June in our most recent sitting. The books: Mouse Guard: Dawn of the Black Axe, plus the graphic-novel adaptation of The Iliad. Dawn of the Black Axe Here’s the headline: All five members of GNG who were present gave this book a thumbs up. We loved it. Carol Vandenberg, L.A. Mood’s co-owner, has always been enchanted by the world-building David Petersen does on his Mouse Guard books. Petersen has created in his imagination an entire culture of medieval mice who live in a far-flung setting, which requires the Guard – whose members are forest rangers – to keep routes between the different communities open. Petersen’s mouse world has the same level of detail as Seth’s mythical city of Dominion. The Black Axe is kind of like Batman, operating outside the rules governing how Guard members behave. And yes, he carries a honking big black axe. His quest: To rid mousekind of the giant snakes that plague them. The new thing in Dawn of the Black Axe is how Petersen, who usually illustrates each book, recruited Gabriel Rodriguez to handle art duties. I thought the story might suffer with Petersen focusing on writing alone, but the group really appreciated what Rodriquez brings to table. Part of the discussion also centred on the Black Axe’s spirit guide. Is the ethereal elk real, is he a ghost, is he a projection from the axe bearer’s mind? I like how Rodriquez sometimes draws the elk as solid, but in other panels he appears to be from another plane of existence. GNG member Amanda pointed out there’s not a lot of joy in the book, no respite from the gloom. But that’s not what interests Petersen. This is a book about the cost of doing your duty and the sacrifices and compromises that follow. The Iliad We weren’t so effusive with our praise for this Gareth Hinds book. We read his comic version of this epic tale in part because its sequel, The Odyssey, is coming to the big screen this summer in a Christopher Nolan adaptation. Overall, we gave The Iliad not a thumb up or down, but a thumb sideways. It's fine. Carol thought it didn’t work on its own, but would make a good adjunct to studying the written version of the epic work. GNG member Matt noted how making it into a comic required Hinds to disrupt the rhyming of the original. I found it to be Biblical in the sense there are many, many lists of the participants in the battle to overthrow Troy, which came across to me as similar to the long verses in the Bible indicating who begat whom. They go on and on. I also stumbled because the names listed in The Iliad aren’t familiar to me. I have a hard time dealing with the notion of gods and mortals who share many of the same feelings and motivations. In The Iliad, gods have children with mortals, they feel human emotions, they change their minds – it’s a mix that makes me uneasy as a reader as I’m not used to thinking of immortals with Earthly traits. Looming in the background of our discussion was a larger question: How can an artist adapt an ancient work of art so that it still speaks to readers in 2026? If you make too many changes, it may be more relatable, yet you’ll anger the purists. The bottom line: This Iliad would be a fine textbook or companion piece to the original. L.A. Mood’s Graphic-Novel Group meets the second Saturday of every month. Next month’s selection is Jeff Lemire’s autobiography, 10,000 Ink Stains. Lemire hails from Southwestern Ontario and if you’ve ever wanted to get a glimpse into his artistic process, check this one out! We’re set to meet July 11 at the gaming tables in the store at 11 a.m. All are welcome to join the discussion! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
